Page 37 of Everlasting

“Hey, sorry, karma just kicked my ass. You rang, I dropped my phone and it slid under my seat.”

Ava’s laughter was good to hear. “Oh my God, I think you might just be my people, Ever!” We both ended up laughing at our phone fuck ups before Ava spoke again. “I wanted to call so that nothing got lost in translation with the way I text. You can talk to me any time. I know this is a strange situation and requires you to suspend your belief or expand it. It’s something that will never be easy to speak about with others. It requires you to have to convince them to believe when you’re still wondering if you experienced something real. I totally get it. Remember, I told you I went to doctors and thought my family had mental issues instead of gifts.” She chuckled. “Well, I think they had a bit of both, but that’s beside the point.”

It was my turn to laugh. “Sounds like my family, only their special gifts are a different skill set entirely.”

“What’s it like being a motorcycle club princess?”

“I wouldn’t know,” I answered honestly.

“Oh, I thought Toby said…”

“He did. I have an unusual story about how I came to my family and it wasn’t really a happy one, so I was never treated like a princess the way my sister was. I can, however, tell you all about what it’s like to be an old lady.” I saw my girls barreling toward the car then. “It will have to be another time because my girls are about to hop in the car. I’ll call you later though, when everyone’s settled in for the night.”

“I’d really like that, Ever.”

“Me too,” I told her and then hung up just as Amber threw the back door open. She jumped inside as and threw her bookbag in the floorboard then hopped in the seat. “Hey, my beautiful girls!” I called out to them as Ashton followed suit and got buckled in. “How was your day?”

“You seem happy, Momma,” Ash mentioned while looking at her sister as if it was the weirdest thing ever to see me happy. It struck me then that I hadn’t been doing a very good job of reassuring my girls. What I thought was passing for normal simply wasn’t our normal and it wasn’t something I was capable of faking.

“I made a new friend today,” I told them.

“Oh! Maybe you can have a sleepover and we’ll order pizzas and watch movies,” Amber added excitedly.

“Maybe one day,” I placated her. “We can still do pizza and movies tonight if you want.” Both girls cheered, and for the first time in almost a year, things felt normal and my hope didn’t feel so false.

Chapter 24

December

Deck

My brain was fucking much, mush, hush… I started laughing at myself. The euphoria was back again, but before I could really become fully cognizant, I was smacked in the face, hard.

“What the fuck did she give him this time?”

“Don’t know, she’s always going on about how it’s some special brew the doctors cooked up for her so she wouldn’t damage him as much this time.”

My eyes rolled at first, but once they were able to focus, I recognized the face staring angrily back at me. “Is she dead?” I managed to ask.

“No,” was the curt reply.

“That sucks,” I mumbled.

The man laughed at my response instead of hurting me. “You have no idea how much it really does.” He moved away from me and started talking to one of the other men present. It was only then that I registered there were other, real people in the room with us. I thought maybe the voices I heard earlier were just someone on speaker phone. “Get him packed up and ready to go within the hour. We need to be gone before she catches wind that we’re here. I’m not letting her stop his transfer back to his people this time.”

“Back to my people?” I parroted and then fell off as I laughed myself straight to the fucking floor.

“Find out what she gave him so we can have a doctor on standby to fix it!” The demand was shouted at whoever else was left in the room. I had no clue because the world tilted sideways. Maybe I was the one who tilted sideways. The cold floor against my cheek felt good though, so I wasn’t going to question it.

“Come on you fucking lump of useless shit!” A man growled the words at me as I was lifted by two sets of hands and dragged to my feet. I could have sworn I heard the rat-a-tat, ping, pop of gun fire. It almost sounded like music to my ears until someone banged my head into the wall. Then everything faded to a blackish nothing.

Before the lights went completely out though, I could have sworn I heard my brother calling out to me. That was weird because I hadn’t seen Jay since his son Pike was born. “Jay,” his name came out more like garbled nonsense and I’m not sure if he even heard me because the ping of bullets hitting too close to home sounded once more and then I was out.

Chapter 25

Too late

Double-D

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